


would you just trust me?

by curnon



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 13k fell out of my mouth, Action, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternative Universe - FBI, Badass Rey, Brave Ben Solo, Competence Kink, Drama, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Feels, Kickass Rey/Ben, Mystery, Rating for swearing - lots of swearing, Rey genuinely kicks Ben's ass, Sexual Tension, Soft Ben Solo, Trust, brave Rey, future smut but otherwise complete, kind of aggressive, otherwise i guess its done, probably going to add smut, reference to murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:56:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27205558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curnon/pseuds/curnon
Summary: Agent Rey Johnson is offered an undercover job by the Director of the FBI - but her Unit Chief, SSA Ben Solo shuts the idea down.“What was it, like a woman thing?”“Don’t kid yourself, Johnson, nobody thinks of you that way.”He’s leaning down, patronising her. So she slams her elbow down on his shoulder, nailing the apex of her joint onto a tension point of his trapezius muscle. He drops to the mat like a sack of flour."
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 90





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This in an AU that has come from too much criminal minds/that scene from Miss Congeniality where Gracie kicks Erics ass and anyway thank you for coming this far I truly didn't mean for it to be so long but here it is in all its trash glory
> 
> EDIT: I'm splitting the chapters because 13k is just far too much to read... I'm sorry hahaa

The passers-by in the lower level watched her with interest as the lean woman marched her way through the hall, towards the wooden double doors at the end, with fury seeping through every pore. She was wearing her government issues sweatpants and t-shirt, and a pair of worn in sneakers, the picture of ‘federal agent’. Her duffle bag hit the ground as soon as she shouldered the gym doors open, throwing it down and pulling out her black hand wraps. Her t-shirt pulled off, leaving her in a fitted sports crop top that comes down to her waist, a long scar running from under the crop and across her right shoulder. She grabbed her water bottle and threw it onto the ground carelessly, her jaw clenching and unclenching, working hard not to snap at someone else working out on the equipment who seemed hellbent on watching her rampage.

She found the closest sparring dummy, and threw her punches calculated, but heavy. She swung hard, uppercut across the rubber head, then body work left, right, left, watching as the rubber bounced back and ready for more. Sometimes it unnerved her that they had faces - today it was helpful. She pictured black as the night sky hair and eyes that never seemed to end, paired with a scar across the dummy’s face. A very particular, albeit attractive face, a face she would very much have liked to punch, crunching that nose beneath her knuckles.

Rey liked her job, however.

So instead she came down here. She rounded on the dummy and her shin collided with its head, the followthrough almost knocking the damn thing over. Twenty minutes passed, she had sweat down her back and hair sticking to her neck, but she felt better. Not perfect, but better. Stopping for water, she looked up at the doorway, only to see him standing there. She was thankful he was no longer in that suit from the debrief, the one that had cut the shape of his shoulders and his back so nicely that her mouth had gone dry - before he had turned on her, that is. His arms were crossed, and he was watching her. She hated that her eyes went to the muscles beneath his shirt, the lines of his chest. She would not be the first to speak, so instead she turned back on the dummy and punched it as hard in its non-existent gut as she could. The punches came out of her, a rise in energy she didn’t think she had left.

“If you’d like to take a shot or two at the real thing, be my guest.”

She rounded on him, storming across the gym towards him, but he was coming towards her too. He was in the middle of the floor mat before she could even take ten steps. Solo was taller than he looked. This isn’t new information, it just always manages to catch her off guard.

“What was it, like a _woman_ thing?”

“Don’t kid yourself, Johnson, nobody thinks of you that way.”

He’s leaning down, patronising her. So she slams her elbow down on his shoulder, nailing the apex of her joint onto a tension point of his trapezius muscle. He drops to the mat like a sack of flour. She’s on his back, his arm pulled behind him before he can retaliate. A crowd has formed, and at the front is Finn Storm and Poe Dameron, exchanging a sly handshake - Rey knows what’s happening, they’re placing bets. She reminds herself to ask later who picked her side.

He snarled into the mat, “It’s _not_ a _woman_ thing.”

“Then what, what was it?”

He throws her off him, _with ease_ and she begins to think she might not have the upper hand she had first though. She interlocks her legs with his torso as he tries to pin her, and there’s cheering from the sideline of the mat.

“It’s a _rookie_ thing.” He said, assuming that his position is one where he holds the power - she looks up at him as the smugness sets in. She grips her legs around him like a vice, and throws him back over her head. She’s got him pinned again, this time her forearm is over his throat - no pressure applied, but the threat is there.

“I’m not a fucking rookie.”

“You are here. You are to me.”

She punches the mat an inch from his head, her voice low and threatening, “I was MI6, Solo. I was _M-I-6_ , I don’t need you assuming what I do and don’t know about my fucking job. If I don’t know something, _I’ll ask._ ”

“You’re _twenty-four,_ how much experience do you expect me to believe you’ve really had?”

“I’d say you’ve read my file. That should have told you enough.”

“Told me plenty - orphaned, _street rat_ turned informant, Scotland Yard recruit, youngest sergeant in UK history, then just all of a sudden MI6. You expect me to believe you just wound up one of MI6’s best intelligence officers with no formal training?” He’s flipping them again, his hands on her shoulders, she repays the favour, their legs pinned to each other as they struggle for dominance. She manages to yank her legs up at the last second, her knees either side of his neck as his back hits the mat. She presses all of her weight into her knees as he tries to throw her off, only he cant. His legs are kicking, trying to throw his torso around enough to move her body weight, but she’s rock solid and doesn’t budge, and she finally has a second to catch her breath.

“You won’t give me the chance to prove myself to you.”

“I’m not sending you in unarmed and unprepared.”

“Be that as it may, if you _ever_ talk about me like that in front of the director,” he doesn’t get to find out what she’ll do, because his legs are wrapped around her torso from behind her and he’s using the muscle bulk of his legs to throw her back down with force, her head hitting the mat first. They have each other pinned. She has his head between her knees, and his thighs are wrapped around her middle. They realise they are at a dead end, a shared nod and they roll out of it. Reset.

She pulls herself up, she’s a few feet from him now and they’re both breathing heavily.

“You’ll what?” He asks her, and she realises he’s taunting her. She launches, her arm wraps around his throat and she swings herself onto his back, her knees pinning to his hips as she leverages herself onto him. He choked and she could feel the smug expression on her face for the split second before he grabbed hold of her arm and threw his body forward. Her grip on him mustn’t have been nearly strong enough because her back hit the mat with an unimpressive _thwap_ and she realised she’d been bested. His hands are up in triumph as the small crowd cheers - _don’t they have their own shit to do_ , she thinks bitterly. He’s distracted, and she takes one last chance, swinging her leg out and across her body, colliding with the back of his knees, his legs come out from underneath him with ease, within a split second he’s on his back beside her.

Her muscles were burning, and she could hear Solo’s heavy breathing matching her own.

“You’re a twat, you know that?”

He smirked at her, “In English, Johnson.” She knew he was trying to get a rise out of her, but unfortunately for her, it worked.

“A cunt, Solo.” She knows she shouldn’t have said it, he is her superior after all. She throws what is left of her energy up, and she’s on her feet, moving to grab her duffle bag from the floor. She watches Poe hand a $50 note to Finn, and she reminds herself to buy Finn a coffee tomorrow morning, if Solo doesn’t have her fired, that is.

* * * * *

_Amilyn Holdo runs the meeting, and on this occasion, she is tedium incarnate. Holdo is a legend, she’s good at what she does, and she does what she’s good at, but the meeting is a review of chatter from surveillance that so far as Rey is aware, turned up nothing. The surveillance team had listened to all 68 hours of it and found nothing of note, so she wasn’t sure why their whole Fugitives taskforce team had to be here to discuss it. At least, she wasn’t until they were told about the physical description of the women going missing and turning up three states away from where they went missing, new information not from surveillance, but from the local police department in Illinois._

_5”6, small framed, brunettes, dimples. They had photos of the women who had gone missing and then turned up dead. Facsimiles for Rey Johnson herself. Rey had pulled one of the photos closer to herself as they had been handed out. It felt as though she was looking in a mirror._

_“Agent Johnson, I think you know what I’m about to ask of you-”_

_“Yes. I’ll do it.”_

_“Like hell she will.”_

_“Agent Solo, you have an objection?”_

_“We’re not sending her undercover.”_

_“Obviously, Solo, I can’t do anything without the approval of her unit chief.” Without his approval. He was her unit chief. She was glaring daggers into the side of his head, not this again, “I would however like to know the motives behind keeping her out of the field.”_

_“She’s ill prepared.”_

_“I would beg to differ, Solo. Agent Johnson outshone her peers in her agency assessments, she has an impressive record from MI6, and she’s the sharpest shooter of your entire team. Not to mention her interrogation skills are beyond impressive.”_

_“On paper, yes. She’s never been undercover-”_

_“Yes I have-”_

_“With our team.” He finishes with a hard look towards her. He looks as though he’s about to scold her for her petulant interruption, but her blood is boiling and she doesn’t care if she looks like a toddler in the middle of a temper tantrum. He was keeping her on the bench on purpose, and had been for months._

_Holdo sighed, “I’d like for you to reconsider. Johnson could be an asset in this case, and it’s in our best interest to catch this unsub.”_

_“I’ll find you a suitable replacement.”_

_Rey sat through the end of the meeting with her hands fisted into balls. They planned a team to send, with an 'appropriate’ undercover agent from another department set to take the job that should have been hers if it weren’t for Benjamin Solo. Her jaw set. Holdo passed her a sympathetic look on her way out, and rather than meet Holdo’s eye, Rey nodded and stormed away from the rest of the team. She couldn’t be near them - near him. She grabbed her duffle bag from underneath her desk and headed downstairs._

* * * * *

Rey had been fourteen when she was arrested. Though, she’d always argued that it couldn’t really be called an arrest when all you had been doing was rifling through bins, hoping for something to eat. The local police didn’t see fit to give her any sort of record for the incident - a local woman had panicked and thought someone was trying to get inside of her side gate and called 999, when in reality it was just a starving fourteen year old. They let her stay the night in lock up and gave her dinner and breakfast and they were the best meals she’d had in months. They let her go, but they had called her emergency contact. She didn’t know how they had his number, she certainly hadn’t given it to them.

Uncle Kenobi.

The old man had stood at the base of the steps to the station, his arms out wide to her. She hadn’t seen him since before her parents had died. Rey had buried her head in his chest and cried. He was the last thing of her parents she had left, the last person on the face of the earth that knew she existed, cared about what happened to her. He wasn’t really her uncle, but he was as good as. He hadn’t known about her parents, he explained, he had started to worry when he couldn’t get in contact with them, but they had always been so secretive he assumed it was nothing to worry about. In reality, there had been three years of Rey living on the streets and scavenging food and spare parts to fix peoples cars in exchange for food, that he could have worried about. The guilt ate away at him, and Rey lived on his couch in his one bedroom apartment in in Southwark, London, until he died just before her exams. She never went back to school, having fallen too far behind for comfort. Instead, Kenobi had taught her everything she would need to know, and she sat her final exams as a homeschool student two weeks after his funeral. She worked for the local PD while she studied, telling them about all she had heard and seen from Kenobi’s fire escape. Drug deals, stabbings, burglary, battery and assault, you name it. She took notes, and sometimes she intervened - though no one condoned it, they never really stopped her either.The police department had taken her on as a rookie as soon as she got her exam results, she was familiar with the squad and she had already proved herself committed to the team, plus, she knew how to fix the engines of the motorbikes and squad cars. It was a sweet deal. They gave her a uniform, paid her more money than she needed - Uncle Kenobi had left her his apartment, all she needed was groceries and bills paid, her paycheque enough to cover it. Soon enough, she moved up the ranks, sitting the necessary drills and exams and passing with flying colours. The job at MI6 had been a dream, but crime in the UK was petty, more often than not, and she had her sights set higher. The FBI. She applied, interviewed with Amilyn Holdo over the phone, and within a week of her application she was on a red-eye flight from London to Virginia, USA. She felt as though she had proved herself, that everything she had gone through would earn her a little respect from her peers, and for the most part it did. Except for him. Except for Supervisory Special Agent Benjamin Solo, who thought she was incompetent and unruly and downright inexperienced. It made her blood boil.

She had changed after their sparring back into her work clothes - black tailored pants, black boots, and a white button up shirt tucked into her pants. She had rolled the sleeves above her elbows, leaning them on the sticky bar as she asked the bartender for another drink. She thought bitterly about Kenobi being proud of her - having come so far, only to come so far. She thought about the officers back in Southwark - they had been like family to her and she had left them to chase a dream that was now well and truly done for. Solo had likely ruined any chance Holdo would ever give her to run an undercover operation.

The bartender placed the whiskey down in front of her, and she pulled out her wallet to pay. He put his hand up, and nodded towards the other end of the bar. A sign that said, “ _don’t worry about it, he paid_.” She groaned quietly, not wanting to turn her head and acknowledge whatever man was trying to take her home to fuck tonight as a prize. Rey figured she’d better get the thank you over with, turning her head to see Solo, sitting at the end of the bar, his shoulders square as his jaw, and the fury boiled in her again. Rey called the bartender back over - he was cute, young but cute, and she said to him,

“Do me a favour, and drink this.”

He blinked, “I’m on the clock.”

“Bartenders are always drunk, it’s in the job description. I won’t tell if you don’t.” She gives him a smile that she knew he won’t be able to refuse - it’s a smile that says, _please, do it for me?_

He grinned at her and took the drink, in two mouthfuls it was gone and she leant over and tucked a $10 note into his top pocket, “Thank you, Isaac.” She said, reading his name tag, “You’ve been a huge help.”

Before she was even back in her seat, Solo was standing next to her. Isaac had lowered his voice as he caught her eye, “Is he giving you trouble? Do you need me to get security?”

Solo played a low blow to poor Isaac, and pulled out his FBI badge, showing it to him with far more aggression than necessary.

“Oh, shit. Sorry.” He said, before giving Rey a quick look that said, _offer still stands if you need it._ She appreciated Isaac’s eagerness, but did not appreciate Solo’s brutish behaviour.

“He’s a little young for you, don’t you think?”

“What, are you jealous?”

He gives her a withering look.

“He’s too young, I’m too young - make up your mind.”

Solo is silent in response, refusing to sit down in the empty chair next to her.

“We’re off duty, so anything you have to say, or not say, to me can wait until tomorrow.” Rey said, turning in her seat so she was facing the bar, instead of him. Unluckily for her, the wall behind the bar was mirrored, so she could still see him.

“I know you’re pissed.”

“Understatement.”

“You have every right to be.”

“Don’t start on my rights, Solo.”

He sighed gruffly, running his hand through his hair as he finally took the free seat next to her,Rey hating herself for watching how his hand traveled through his thick hair, “Look. My team is important to me, the safety of my team is important to me-”

“You see that sounds like you’re trying to defend your actions under a guise of my safety, but what you are neglecting to recognise within that, is the _assumption you have made that I cannot protect myself.”_

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. Do you stop Phasma going undercover?”

“No-“

“Do you stop Storm, or Dameron?”

“No, but-”

“What about Lintra? Do you stop Lintra?”

“No.”

“Do you see,” she spat, ignoring the way he flinched at the venom, “You make exceptions for me because you think I’m incapable. But you’ll never stop thinking I’m incapable if you never give me a chance-” 

“Johnson, would you shut up for five fucking seconds? I already spoke to Holdo. She’s put you in as the undercover.” He said, as frustrated as she felt, the vein in his neck straining against his skin. She narrowed her eyes at him, not willing to trust what he had just said,

“Why?”

“She thinks you’re best for the job.”

“No, not Holdo. You. Why did you double back?”

“Because you kicked my ass.”

“Oh, what because I can take you down I’m able to take down _anyone else_ that I might have to? God you’re so arrogant-”

“No,” he snorted to himself, “No, it’s because I didn’t want you to kick my ass again. It was much more self-serving than all that, Johnson. Go home, get your go bag packed, we’re leaving at 0600, be at the airstrip 0530 for briefing, or we will leave without you. That’s a promise.”

* * * * *

13 days she had been undercover as Louise Hunter, a 23 year old grad student at Illinois State University, finishing her masters in education, visited Chicago on weekends to see her friends, hated the taste of oranges but loved orange juice. It had taken 6 days to catch his attention, but she had managed it. She had taken to going to the coffee shops his previous victims frequented, pretending to read her class notes in the park while the team updated her on movements of suspicious individuals through her earpiece, walking around the block of the apartment the bureau had rented as her cover, late at night hoping to spot a vehicle not registered to the area. It wasn’t until she was putting groceries in the back of the rental car that she sensed something was wrong, a sixth sense that made her skin crawl and her stomach lurch.

She hadn’t been prepared for him then. She had no eyes on her, and her gun was in the purse she had placed in the boot of the car before loading the grocery bags. She couldn’t reach for it without alerting him before he even got to her. She could see him in the reflection of the chrome of the car. Rey knew what she had to to. Feign weakness. Figure out who he was. Let him abduct her. Rey reached forward and pressed the duress button that had been temporarily retrofitted to the rental car before closing the boot. It would let Solo and the team know something was wrong, and they’d find the car, probably check the grocery store footage, and ID the plates of the vehicle he was about to push her into. As the boot slammed shut she prepared herself for the arms that wrapped around her, but she hadn’t been prepared for the cloth that covered her mouth and nose - chloroform. _Fuck,_ she thought as she lost control of her consciousness, falling floppily into the unsub’s arms as he wrangled her into the van’s open door. That’s all she remembered before she woke up, her left ankle chained to a wall. She assessed the lock on the chain and realised she could unlock it very easily, but she couldn’t just yet. Rey needed to know more about who this guy was, where his other victims were, she had a job to do.

It took 7 more days to do what she needed to do - she found out his name - Hux, found out that he’d been to prison for assault, and had no intention of returning. It was stupidly easy to get him to talk, Rey thought. Though it hadn’t been without its costs, she had to let him beat her bloody, all the while she sat with a bobby pin in her hair, able to remove her chain at any time. There came a time when she started to think the team honestly couldn’t find her, and panic had almost set in, until he had slipped up. He had left the basement door open. She had heard his car leave, and she waited until it had gotten dark before she undid the lock as easily as she had imagined, and snuck up the stairs and out the back door of the house she was being kept in. She ran, finding the nearest police station, demanding to speak to their Chief, demanding someone call Agent Solo, she gave them Hux’s name and the address of the house she had just run from, before she passed out onto the linoleum floor with a _thud_.


	2. Chapter 2

She woke up in an Illinois hospital bed almost 12 hours later. She had a number of drains sticking out of her arms and chest, and she felt the aches and pains of the last two weeks all over her body. Rey let her head relax gently against the pillow, only able to imagine how black and blue she was. She could feel a cut that had been running along her jaw was sutured closed, covered in a dressing. Her throat was dry, and as though Rey had summoned her mentally, a nurse appeared in her doorway,

“Oh good, you’re awake. Your team is here, but I’ll send the doctor in first.” She sent in the doctor with a large cup of water. The doctor checked her over, and when she asked Rey how she was feeling, Rey tried very hard not to say something rude. For all intents and purposes, she was alive and well, but she’d be even more so if someone could tell her that they got the unsub. She drank the water and handed the doctor back the cup, before the team had piled into her room, talking over the top of each other. Ben Solo stood back in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest as he watched the rabble. After a while, Finn had looked back at Solo, and had motioned everyone to make an exit and give Rey some air. They were all so glad she was okay, they had said, hugs and grins and pats on the back all around.

Solo had made himself comfortable at the end of her bed. His suit fitting him too well to be fair when she was laying in a hospital gown, her arse bare to the mattress.

“I’m glad you’re awake.”

“Me too.”

“We got him, Hux.”

“Oh thank god.”

“God had nothing to do with it. It was all you.”

Her voice is quiet when she says, “I thought - I thought you couldn’t find me.”

Solo tensed, but recovered quickly, “We knew where you were, but we also knew you’d try and get a confession, or information out of him. We gave you time.”

“I did.” She told him about the bodies he’d buried off the interstate, how she’d overheard his conversation on the phone with someone from the First Order - Ben nodded, he was familiar,

“They’re a crime syndicate in the flyover states, they lay low most of the time because they tend to run white-collar ops, but every now and then one of them goes rogue and we can take out a branch of the operation - like this one.”

“But you only got Hux?”

“We got Hux, and he was mighty chatty by the time we got him. Apparently he was convinced that despite 8 murders dead to rights we would be able to reduce his sentence if he gave us information.”

She relaxed even further into the hospital grade pillow. Her hands covering her face as she processed it all.

“You did good, Johnson,” Solo said, his hand on her shoulder as if she was made of glass, “You did so good.”

“I hate that you’re surprised.” She said rolling her eyes.

“I’m not. I’m relieved… that you’re alive.”

* * * * *

The fugitive taskforce got to borrow a plane from one of the FBI’s more lucrative teams whenever big cases like this one came up. Rey was thankful for it now, because the idea of being jammed into an economy seat with three fractured ribs and a screaming toddler kicking her seat was hell on earth. She sat towards the back of the plane, and while everyone was sleeping or chatting quietly, she leafed lazily through the file that had been put together for Hux.

It was hard to look at the face in his mugshot. He didn’t look much like that anymore. In the mugshot his face was almost handsome, sharp features with hair and beard well managed. Rey had seen him almost feral. His eyes were sunken, and his hair unkempt. She wondered how he had fallen from the First Order’s good graces, how he had gone from white collar fraud to assault, kidnapping, and murder. Or maybe it wasn’t too far a reach from the First Order’s M.O. after all.

“You okay?” A voice asked, breaking her from her concentration. Solo had sat down opposite her, a whiskey neat in his hand. The upside of the jet - it was fully stocked.

“As much as I can be.”

“I’d like you to talk to the psychiatrist when we get back - not straight away, just want you to check in.”

Normally, she would have taken that as an insult, but there was something in his voice that made her think it was coming from a genuine place - she’d been through a trauma, and he wanted to do his job as her superior to keep her safe even afterwards.

“I’m sorry I called you a cunt.” She said sheepishly, looking out the window at the night sky, “It was out of line.”

“I was already out of line, dragging you to Holdo like that,” He pushed the glass towards her, running his hand through his hair,Rey could have punched herself in the face for how long her eyes lingered on his hands, “I was actually coming to give you that, a peace offering.”

“You don’t need a peace offering, Solo. You’re my unit chief, you say jump, I say how high, remember?” Though she took the glass all the same, taking a small mouthful from it, her jaw aching. The bruise that had bloomed there a reminder of Hux’s knee to the face.

“Can I be honest with you?”

“I appreciate honesty,” she said with a small smile, “Go ahead chief.”

“The reason I didn’t want you in the field like this - it wasn’t because I didn’t trust you, it wasn’t even that I didn’t believe you were capable. It was selfish.”

“What, _you_ wanted to go undercover as a 5”6 brunette to get the shit kicked out of you?”

Ben laughed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to get himself back on track, “No. I was worried about you getting hurt. Because…” He trailed off, the hint of his remaining laughter long gone, “Because I didn’t think I could deal with letting you get hurt.”

“We get hurt, Solo. It’s part of the job. We get shot, stabbed, kidnapped, but we always live.”

“I couldn’t watch any of that happen to you.”

“But you did. I’m okay.”

“No, I didn’t. I’m a coward. I worked from the local PD and Dameron ran the busts. I couldn’t sit still, with every raid we ran the chance of finding you alive got worse and worse. Every minute you were with Hux, I was sure you’d be dead. I couldn’t be there for that, I couldn’t see you… I couldn’t see you like that. So I stepped back. I let Dameron run the team, I handled the admin and the media and your hospital admission, and they did just fine without me.”

“What are you saying?”

“You belong on this team, you thrive here, and this team will always have your back, the bureau will always have your back,” he said, looking down at his hands as though they were brand new to him, renewed interest in the moles than trailed the back of his hands and forearms, “I just don’t think there’s a place for me here anymore. I can’t be objective, I’m not - I’m not making choices for the good of the team like I used to.”

“Solo-”

“I already put in my transfer request with Holdo,” he said, a hand up to silence her argument, “She’s going to promote Dameron to unit chief, and I’ll step down as of Monday. I’ll make sure Poe never questions your skill or integrity in the same way I did.”

“Ben, what-”

“Get some rest, Johnson. We need to check you back into the medical centre at Quantico when we land.” He stood up and wandered down the other end of the jet, pulling on a pair of black wireless headphones and settling into a seat as far from her as he could get, leaving Rey looking at his previously occupied seat in stunned silence.

* * * * *

The medical centre at FBI Academy in Quantico was smaller than the hospital in Illinois, a base hospital rather than a medical centre. Only, the staff were just as serious about checking her over before she be back in the field. Solo’s request that she meet with a psychiatrist when she was ready was ignored by the staff, who sent in Dr Spaulding within the first hour of her admission. It was ridiculous that she was back in a hospital gown, she felt fine, ready to be back with the team - what was left of it, anyway.

Rose, the teams technical analyst, had been waiting for her with concerned eyes and a basket full of goodies. Rey had beamed at the sight of her friend, not at all surprised by the extravagance of the welcome-home-glad-you-didn’t-die basket. It had chocolate, and fruit, and a fluffy bear wearing an FBI vest that made Rey laugh and her broken ribs scream. She settled for a soft thank you, and letting Rose sit with her while the doctors and nurses assessed her. Rey spent two days at the base hospital, before they discharged her, gave her two weeks for field clearance, and let her go home. Only there did her mine start to process what had happened, what she had seen and done, and what had come as a result.

What Supervisory Special Agent Ben Solo had said to her.

“Did you hear about Solo?” Rose had asked her, sitting cross-legged on her hospital bed, trying to teach her the rules to a card game her and her sister had made up when they were kids, “He’s stepped down,” she continued, not waiting for Rey’s response, “I heard Homeland poached him. I thought they would have to pry his dead body from that desk of his.” “

“Maybe he wants to chase the First Order?” Rey had suggested, pushing the thought that she had anything to do with Solo’s choice, back down to the pit of her stomach.

Rey had taken a cab home from the hospital, refusing Poe’s and Finn’s and Roses’ offers to drive her back to her apartment. She couldn’t stop her mind racing, there was something that wasn’t sitting right - not just with Solo but with the case. Why had Hux given up that information so easily? Why did he just leave the basement door open like that? She had been too relieved and focused on her escape to question it. She sat on her couch in her sparsely decorated apartment, her neighbours radio filtering softly through the walls. She thought over the file on Hux, what Rose had found on digging through his life - not much. Hux had seemed like he didn’t exist until ten years ago, and then to basically hand himself over? Her stomach dropped the same way it did on as a rollercoaster goes over the highest peak and starts to come down.

She swiped her phone open and dialled his number, her hands shaking as it rang, and rang.

_“Pick up, Solo”_ she hissed, the ringing stopped and his voice caught her off guard,

“Rey, what do you need?”

The words came running out of her mouth before she could piece together a coherent explanation, “It’s a trap.”

A beat, “What is?”

“Hux is sending us into a trap,” she said, up and on her feet, pinching the bridge of her nose as she tried to explain to him, “He let himself get caught, he gave us the information he wanted to give us, he’s sending us into a trap. You said branches of the First Order sometimes go rogue - what if it’s not rogue, what if it’s calculated? What if it’s all part of a plan bigger than just Hux murdering brunettes in Illinois?”

“Rey, have you slept?”

“I’m not _imagining_ things, Ben.”

“I didn’t say you were - wait, why didn’t you call Dameron?”

“Because-” she started, unsure how to finish the sentence - she’d called Ben because he would know what to do, because she knew he had a plan, he always did, because she trusted him, she called him because she’d thought he was the one walking into a trap, “You’re with Homeland now, right?” She finished, covering the pause as quickly as possible, silently thanking Rose for the information - well, the gossip.

There was a beat, then he said, “I’ll look into it. Thank you, Johnson. Get some sleep.” Then the line went dead. She threw her phone onto her couch and stared at the ceiling until she fell into a dreamless asleep.

* * * * *

Her debrief with Holdo was scheduled for her first day back at the office - still out of the field she would be spending time working from her desk while the team was out on cases, helping Rose narrow the unsub criteria from the dingy tech cave she called an office. That could wait, in the eyes of Amilyn Holdo.

“Are you happy to be back?”

“Yes, it’s nice to have a purpose.”

“Solo informed me you agreed to see a psychiatrist.”

“I spoke with one at the base hospital,” she nodded, “She gave me the all clear.”

Amilyn made notes as they spoke. Rey appreciated the ease of their conversation, formal yet familiar. She recounted the events for her as specifically as she could, leaving out no details. She informed Holdo of the phone call with Solo - not all of it, but the general details of her suspicions. Holdo had nodded, unsurprised by the information, but surprised that Rey didn’t have any updates about it.

She eyed her carefully, “Agent Johnson, the Homeland threat assessment and organised crime teams flew out two days ago, they’ve spanned their agents across the mid-west - your team left to join them this morning.”

From the look on her face, Holdo pushed on, “No one told you?”

“No.” She wondered why she hadn’t seen anyone around, or heard from anyone. They were in the air, off to join Solo and his new team, “No one told me.” She could understand why there was a bitterness in her voice, but she didn’t want Holdo to catch it. It was too late for that, however. Holdo caught it.

“Agent Johnson, it’s not personal. You’ve been recovering, I imagine they weren’t expecting you back so soon.”

She nodded curtly in response,

“Agent Tico can catch you up,” Holdo said, standing up to let Rey know their debrief was finished. They shook hands and Rey left her office, taking the elevator down to ninth floor - the level the fugitives taskforce resided in. She wanted to break something. She wanted to go down to the gym but she was on limited movement orders for the next week. Her desk was exactly the way she left it, except for one thing. There was a small, black box sitting on top of her keyboard. She frowned at it, she’d report it to security if it wasn’t so small, so innocent looking. Rey opened it, and tipped its contents into her hand. It was a chain, long and burnished silver, and attached to it was an oval charm that had a catholic motif carved into it. She didn’t know its importance - or who the particular saint was supposed to be, or why someone had left it for her. She turned it over in her hands, as though to look for some sign of who left it for her. She looked into the small box and found a piece of paper that had a handwritten word, “Agrippina”. A gift from the team, probably. Only she couldn’t remember if she knew anything about any of their faiths. She slipped the long chain over her head and tucked it under her shirt, putting the box to the side and pulling her keyboard towards her, opening up the case file before she called the team to check in and see if they had made contact with the Homeland security and organised crime units yet.

* * * * *

Three days passed, and with every passing hour she grew more and more anxious about the state of the case. They were finding addresses owned by known First Order members abandoned, burnt out, bodies were dropping across the midwest and all Rey could do was watch from her desk, from Roses’ office. This was the work she left MI6 to do, and she wasn’t allowed to do it. Instead, she played the face of the fugitives taskforce in meetings, and helped run their team from her desk. Holdo called her into a meeting on Friday afternoon - it didn’t matter the hour, there would be no weekends or evenings until this case was solved. They weren’t in Holdo’s office, but in one of the meeting rooms on the directors floor. A number of people where already there when she arrived, coffee in hand, including a face she only knew from the television - Senator Organa. It must be making the news, this case, or at least was destined to, if the Senator was invited in for updates.

She sat down towards the back of the room, as Holdo started the meeting. It was an update on the progress - they had caught nineteen of the known members, but none were speaking. Dameron had gone to speak to Hux in prison, to try and get more information from him and had received nothing but smug contempt. That, and confirmation that a larger operation was at play - something they already knew. He had wasted time driving that far out of Chicago. Solo never would have bothered, Rey thought, he would have known Hux would be useless. They still hadn’t tied the string of crimes to the First Order - not technically, anyway. Sure, the members they had caught were current or former members, but none of them confirmed they were working on First Order mandates, but they didn’t deny it either. Rey’s jaw worked as she processed the information, it was frustrating to say the least, being benched. She was often surprised she didn’t crack a tooth when she got like this.

Holdo had asked for her assessment of the fugitive taskforce’s progress - and she updated the room on the low level members that had been caught running drugs across the border from Ontario into Michigan, and the teams interrogation of them. She explained the roadblocks they had set up with local PD’s, and that half the team had moved down to Missouri to investigate some of the claims made my small town Sherifs about unusual disappearances and murders. Holdo nodded when she was done, somewhat pleased with the progress.

Rey was about to slink back into her chair when she noticed Senator Organa looking at her with interest, her head tilted to the side ever so slightly. She gave the woman a polite smile, and then focused her eyes back onto the documents in her lap. The meeting wrapped up soon after, a representative from each team sufficiently updated on the other teams involvements and progress. They felt no closer to bringing the First Order down, but Rey was impressed with the FBI’s mobilisation of over ten departments in less than a week. Rey was on her way out of the meeting room when she heard her name called,

“Agent Johnson, might I have a word?”

It was Senator Organa.

“Of course, ma’am.” Rey said, sitting in a nearby chair when the older woman motioned for her to do so. Holdo had excused herself, leaving the two of them alone in the room. Rey knew the Senators’ bodyguard was just outside the open door, so they were alone, but not completely.

“I’ve heard about you, from Amilyn. About your work in Illinois.”

Rey waited for more.

“Your reputation precedes you,” she added, her hands folded neatly on the table, “I didn’t realise you were British. Or quite so petite. From what I’d heard about your physical skill-”

“You expected a bodybuilder from Tennessee?” Rey interrupted with a quirked eyebrow.

The Senator laughed and caught Rey by surprised, “I had also heard you were quick witted. It’s nice to see that the rumours are true.”

The silence was a little awkward, Senator Organa eying her carefully, and Rey completely unsure of why she was still sitting in the meeting room.

“Is there something I can do for you, ma’am?”

“No. I just wanted to formally introduce myself, Senator Leia Organa.” The Senator said, holding out her hand to Rey, who took it evenly and said, “Agent Rey Johnson.”

The Senator smiled, and something caught her eye in the light. It was the necklace around Rey’s neck, she had been fiddling with it during the meeting and had forgotten to tuck it back into her shirt.

“Ah, Agrippina.”

“Ma’am?”

“Patron Saint of protection against evil spirits. I gave my son one just like it, once upon a time,” she said with a wistful smile, “To protect him.”

“What from?”

“He works here. So, just about anything and everything, I guess. He accepted it, knowing it was important to me that he wear it. Not one for religion, my boy, but honouring wishes? That he respects.”

Rey felt as though she had swallowed a mouthful of acid. She asked a question she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to.

“Who is your son?”

The ground fell out from beneath her as Senator Leia Organa stood up from her seat, a smile, another handshake and the name, “Benjamin Solo.”

* * * * *

Solo had left her the necklace. It wasn’t bought for her, it was _his_. He had given her the necklace he had been wearing since the day she had met him, probably even before her, the necklace she had only ever caught glimpses of from under his collar. A gift from his mother, a plead for safety, for protection.

What was he playing at? He keeps her benched, then throws her in the deep end just because she asked him to, refuses to be involved in her rescue, then resigns? On top of that leaving her a necklace that surely means more than just “stay safe” because… because it can’t just mean that.It probably means resign from the FBI, stay so safe you get the fuck out of here. He was half-way across the continent.

She was dialling the number for her unit chief - her _current_ unit chief - before she knew what she was doing. She was livid. It was patronising, really. A reminder of how little she was contributing.How dare Solo? Poe answered on the second ring,

“Johnson, what do you have?”

She updated him on the meeting, and he was relieved to hear about the progress of the other teams. Rey seized the opportunity of his momentary calm to say,

“I need to come join you in the field.”

“You’re on limited movement orders, Johnson. You know you can’t do that.”

“This is probably going to take more than a week, I can liaise with local PD’s for you, then when my orders lift I’ll be right there. I won’t be any help from here once they lift, you know that.”

There was a pause. Poe was exchanging a glance with someone, with Lintra more than likely.

“Fine. They’re sending another team our way tonight. I’ll call Holdo and sort it out. Do you have your go bag?”

“Always, sir.”

“Then get your ass to the airstrip. We’ll see you soon.”

* * * * *

The two hour flight over West Virginia and Kentucky, right into St Louis, Missouri was quick. She sat in silence with the unit she flew with - she wasn’t even sure who they were. Tactical support, maybe? She didn’t care. They ignored her and she ignored them right back. They all had a job to do. Chatting wasn’t on the itinerary.

Lintra was waiting for her at the airstrip, and they climbed into their government issued, all black, SUV. Lintra drove, and she made light conversation about the flight, and how Rey’s ribs were feeling. Lintra wasn’t exactly the friendliest, but she was damn good at her job. She was a trained negotiator and watching her work made Rey want to hand over the keys to her damn apartment and say, “You know what, you keep it.” Lintra wasn’t kind, but Rey trusted her with her life.

Lintra filled her in with where the team was.

Poe and Lintra had been in St Louis for just over 18 hours, with a number of the organised crime team, going over some of the documents that had been pulled from an encrypted file on a computer found as evidence.

“They’re intentionally crossing state-lines, they seem to be staying to major cities which makes our job a little easier, but also more challenging because we’re literally looking at millions of people in danger-“

Rey had been nodding, reading through the scanned copy of the documents as Lintra spoke, when the tone caught her ear, “Wait, _danger_?”

“We have intelligence that confirmed this bigger plan of theirs… well, it’s is explosive in nature.”

“A bomb?”

“Yeah.”

Rey sunk into her seat. The papers loose in her hands. They had no idea who was at the centre of First Order, no idea where they were operating out of, and up to ten FBI teams scattered across the mid-fucking-west. It was chaos. They were being outsmarted. Rey hated that. People were going to die. Lots of them. She threw the documents back into the manilla folder and leant her elbows onto her knees as Tallie drove.

They reached the St Louis PD in record time, thanks to Lintra not holding back on the sirens through spotty traffic areas. Rey grabbed her bag and followed Lintra into the station, picking up her visitor pass from the front desk and affixing it to her trousers. Through the bullpen and into a room at the back of the station, filled with mostly men, and boards with crime scene photos and paperwork and sticky notes pinned to it.

“Johnson,” Poe said with a nod, usually he was more chipper, but Rey could understand the current situation. Solo had stepped down and pushed him up to the unit chief role for one of the biggest combined cases in FBI history. He was in over his head, “Glad you could join us.”

Before she could reply, a low, rumbling voice asked sharply, “What is she doing _here_?”

Rey rounded, her eyes dangerous ready to fire back, but she didn’t need to, Poe spoke for her. God, she hated when men did that for her. “Rey is part of the team Solo, you know that.”

“She’s on limited orders for another week.”

“She’s not your responsibility. She’s here to liaise until that time is up.”

“She-”

“ _She_ ,” Rey snapped, looking between the two of them, “can speak for herself, thank you. We have work to do, Solo. So unless you have anything helpful to catch me up on, I’d like to speak with my _unit chief_.”

Solo looked as though he had been slapped. His jaw set and he took a step back, giving her a curt nod, his eyes lingering on her neck for a moment, before turning to leave the room. She had never really noticed before, but he had to duck his head slightly as he went through the doorway. His height always caught her off-guard. She watched until he disappeared through the bullpen before she turned back to Poe.

Finn was still up in Detroit dealing with the fall out of drug bust. Phasma was in Chicago, monitoring the First Order safe-houses they had uncovered. Lintra was heading to Milwaukee with a team in the morning. Rey was to stay with Dameron, she’d be running point while Poe was in the field.

The days fast moving, and with each day they gained more and more knowledge. The First Order ran deep, quite literally. A defected member - one who hadn’t gotten away lightly by anyones standards, blinded with hydrochloric acid during a “work incident” on a construction sitemere weeks after his resignation from the Order - had told them about the underground tunnels they used to move from city to city. He told them about the kinds of operations First Order ran; from drug smuggling to sex trafficking, and everything in between. First Order wasn’t so white collar, after all. They had a fall guy for each and every plan, one that was paid handsomely for their prison time. They still hadn’t figured out why Hux had been murdering those women in Illinois, and it was bothering Rey.

She coordinated press-releases, gave statements, spoke to family members, did interviews with suspects, with witnesses. She’d never been in an office for so long in her life, but it was helping her focus on the case, focus on what was bothering her about it all.

She was sitting in the back room of the station, looking up at the boards, a crease between her eyebrows as she traced the progression of the crimes. Her lunch - a salad from the cafe across the road - sat open and untouched on the desk as she pulled a knee to her chest.

“Johnson.”

“Solo.” She said, not pulling her eyes from the board. She’d know that voice anywhere.

“I wanted to apologise, about what I said-”

“It’s fine.”

Clearly that was enough for him, because he was sitting at the table, his arms folded across his chest as he looked up at the board.

“Something is bothering you about it.”

“What?”

“You get this look when something doesn’t make sense to you. It’s a very specific look.”

“You notice too much.”

“It’s my job.”

“Uh-huh.” She said, absent-mindedly as the ran over the list of things that didn’t make sense to her.

“So what is it?” He asks, after a moment, “What is bothering you?”

“The timeline, for starters.”

“Go on.”

“They’ve been running for over a decade,” she states, a pen flipping through her fingers as she leans back in her chair, following the timeline across the boards, “first mentioned online ten years ago in a forum on the dark net. _Ten years_ , they have stayed under the radar, working just fine with well oiled plans and avoiding leaving DNA at every single crime scene. They never let themselves get caught.”

Solo didn’t speak. She waited for him to, but he didn’t. He just watched her.

“Then we get Hux, just like that. He all but hands himself over, and it all unravels. Why? What is Hux in all of this?”

“He’s nothing. He’s a fall guy.”

“No, he’s everything.”

“Dameron didn’t get anything out of him.”

“Because Hux didn’t want him to.”

“You think he needs interviewing again? Dameron could send Phasma in, she’s closest.”

“No, he’s narcissistic, he’s not going to speak to someone who caught him, but he might speak to me, someone he thinks he dominated.”

“Not happening.”

“Once again, Solo. You’re not my boss.”

“I’m still your superior, regardless of unit.”

“Why me?” She asks suddenly, the thought resurfacing from the depths of her brain, “Why did all those women look like me?”

“ _You_ looked like _them_ , Johnson.”

“No,” she said, panic rising in her chest as some of the cogs begin to click into place, frowning as she pulled the original case file out from under the pile, “ _No_. Look at them.” She shoves the crime scene photos of the women, _of their bodies_ , towards him. It’s something she hadn’t seen before - would have had no reason to look for if it weren’t for the acidic feeling in the pit of her stomach. _“Really_ look, Solo.”

He considered the photos, and looked up at her with an expression that was either sympathy or concern. Solo thought she had lost her mind. Rey tugged at the top button of her shirt, and Ben’s eyes widened momentarily until she yanked it to the side, exposing her collarbone. An old, but nasty, jagged scar ran down her neck and to her shoulder. One she’d been given brutally while she was with MI6. His eyes snapped back down to the photos. Identical injuries, knife wounds, post-mortem. It was a message. Give us the girl, and maybe we’ll stop.

“Rey,” he started, and she sunk into her chair, feeling as though she was no longer attached to the earth.

She looked up at him and said, “Hux was a trap, for me. And I took it.”


	3. Chapter 3

Rey couldn’t request her old case files from MI6 without a supervisor - so she had handed the phone over to Solo who gave his credentials, and the fax number of the St Louis police station.Demanding it be done now. The daylight had long since disappeared, and they were on their third coffee each of the evening, pouring over the documents of each and every case she had worked, making a pile of potential cross overs with this case. She hadn’t worked any white-collar crimes, so that left only the murders and trafficking and drugs. She’d worked domestically and internationally, so the pool of suspects was so much larger than what they had originally anticipated.

Around 3am, Ben picked up his phone and called someone. They answered on the second ring,

“Hey, it’s me. Sorry it’s so late,” He said, his voice different, softer somehow, as he got up and moved away from the table and out into the bullpen, “Can I talk to you?”

Rey looked away, feeling as though she was intruding on what she had heard. She didn’t know anything about Solo’s private life, other than who his mother was. He was probably talking to his wife, or kid maybe. She didn’t have it in her to find it important at that moment.

She was on one of the last cases from the pile, and she almost kicked herself for not assuming this had everything to do with that fucking scar. She opened it, and the photo that looked back at her made her skin crawl. Anthony Snoke.

* * * * *

_The hand around her throat, the air that was becoming harder and harder to pull in to her lungs, the knife at her jugular. It was all consuming. She wanted to say goodbyes, but who did she have to say goodbye to? Her parents and uncle was gone, she’d join them soon. Her team were gone, they didn’t know where she was, and she was going to die here. Snoke stood behind her, holding her against him as his grip around her throat tightened,_

_“I don’t like having petulant little girls disrupting my business,” his accent, American. That sounded about right with what they had known about the group - foreign, no limit of resources, “If you had just left it alone in Barcelona, you would be on your way back home to your pathetic life, Johnson. But instead you had to stick that little nose where it didn’t belong, in_ my _business.” He spat when he spoke and it disgusted Rey._

_She kicked wildly with what energy she had left, but collided with nothing._

_A loud noise came from the room next-door, and he faltered, his grip loosening on her throat only slightly, but it was enough, she took in a raspy breath and tensed her core, throwing her legs up and over his head, finding her footing behind him. He stumbled, his arm twisting and forcing him to release her neck. She kicked a heavy boot into the back of his knee, and swiftly retrieved her gun from the floor,_

_“Stay the fuck down.” She hissed at him, pointing the gun at the back of his head, as the door was kicked it, unaware that the knife had dragged along her collarbone, opening her skin up like a ripe summer fruit._

* * * * *

She was going to be sick. She stood up and calmly handed the file to Solo, still on the phone in the doorway, before walking to the trashcan in the corner, picking it up, placing one hand on the wall in front of her, and hurled the coffees and salad, and the rest of the contents of her stomach into the plastic lined bin. Ben looked at her startled, but she waved him off, telling him she was fine. He quickly finished his call with a “Mom, I’ll call you back”, and she managed to say, “that one, it’s him,” between vomits.

Solo read through the case, and in the same way it had for her, the pieces started to fall into place.

“You met him in Barcelona?”

“No, Prague. I almost had him cornered in Barcelona, but we only managed to catch one of his acquaintances - probably the same system he has set up here. I didn’t think we’d gotten the right guy so I pushed it. I pushed it until I found him in Dresden. That’s when-” she threw up again, the sting of the bile through her oesophagus making her gag. “The scar. That’s where he gave it to me.”

She stood up and Solo offered her a water bottle from the middle of the table. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, sitting back down gingerly as she sipped at the water.

“He was in prison. He was _supposed_ to be.”

“Where?”

“In Hamburg.”

“We need Interpol.”

Rey nodded, she felt weak. She wasn’t allowed in the field, and it was starting to feel as though this was all her fault. Solo had read her mind, placing his hand on her forearm as he said,

“Johnson, they were operating out of the midwest for much longer than you were with MI6, none of this is your fault. But you are the link, okay? You’re going to help us take them down, for good.”

She nodded, and when his hand came off her arm, she could have sworn the temperature in the room dropped. He must have noticed her shiver, because he leant down and pulled his windbreaker from his bag, “Put it on.” It wasn’t a request, it was an order. So she did. It was much too big for her, but the warmth was necessary. It smelled like… like Solo. She didn’t linger on that thought for long, but there was something like vanilla, and something woody?

He was on the phone again, dialling through the bureau's resources to get in contact with Interpol.She put her head down on the table, her head swimming. Something about the warmth in his windbreaker, and the comfort of his low voice on the phone, lulled her to sleep. What felt like only minuted later, a hand was on her shoulder, carefully waking her,

“Johnson, wake up. Dameron is here, we need to update him.”

Solo did the talking, which Rey was grateful for. She still felt like shit. She was aching all over, head head was pounding, and at every mention of Snoke’s name her stomach lurched, ready to empty itself once more.

Snoke was international, Interpol had confirmed over the phone. He had broken out of the prison in Hamburg 18 months ago, caused a riot as a distraction and had outside help to smuggle him out in an armoured vehicle. They had lost track of him after that. Interpol had been monitoring the airports, but they admitted they had very little strength in monitoring the ports. It was likely he’d slipped out of Europe on a ship. Their intelligence had told them Snoke had networks all over the Northern Hemisphere, the European networks looking identical to the ones in North America. Solo was of the opinion that to take it all down, they needed to dismantle the Mid-western operation first. This appeared to be Snoke’s hunting ground, where he was most comfortable. Dameron listened, frequently checking on Rey’s face. Solo explained the scar, the murders in Illinois, the timeline, that this was all orchestrated to happen now, it was no accident. They had to be careful, they had to reign everything in. The FBI’s resources were spread far too thin over such a large area. They needed to find out where the hub, the epicentre, of Snoke’s operations were and focus there. They needed to take down the centre and the rest would crumble.

These plans were above Rey’s pay grade, but she was pleased on some level to be a part of it. To know that she could help.

“I think Rey should go back to DC.” Poe said.

“ _What_?” Her outrage was matched by Solo’s. She looked up at him, but he didn’t falter.

“She is here now, Dameron, you can’t expect us to send her back to the office?”

“If she’s involved in any way, she’s a material witness. She can’t be here.”

“I’m not a witness, I was the arresting agent, and then the undercover agent - this isn’t personal, it’s professional-”

“He orchestrated a string of murders to trap you, it seems personal-”

“What is it with my unit chief’s _sidelining_ me?” She snapped, looking between the two of them, “I’m on the team, I’m _not_ a material witness, no attorney could argue that I am.” 

“You’re still on limited work orders. You have fractured ribs”

“ _Fuck_ limited orders.” She snarled, rounding on Poe again, “Let me in, Dameron. Let me in. You said you wouldn’t let him keep me out like you did.” She glared at Ben. He followed through on that. 

It was near on 7am by the time they had Rose on the phone. She was giving her all of the information she could on Snoke. He was obviously going by a pseudonym because there was no record of him in the States since 2008. She described his appearance, and Rose was able to find a photo from him from 2006, but ran it through her face-ID program. Rey had her on speaker so the room could hear her, the tapping of the keyboard a comfort.

“Could he be under another name?”

“Oh definitely, but he’s too much of a narcissist to choose another name entirely. It will be something familiar, something he knows or has used before. He might have even taken someone else’s name-”

Rose took a sharp breath in.

“Would he be stupid enough to use an anagram?” She asked Rey.

“What do you have?”

“Ashton Kenyon, St Louis resident, classical art deal, a bank account with deposits that are ludicrous even for art dealers… popped up not long after Snoke fell off the radar.”

“I don’t think it’s art bringing that money in.”

“There’s three properties under his business name, his signature on the deeds, all of them warehouses, and all of them on the edge of an exact 6 mile radius from his apartment.”

“Tico, send-”

“I know, Solo. I just sent the addresses to your phones.”

Lintra was halfway back from Milwaukee when they called her, she picked Phasma up from Chicago on the way past, and Finn was already on a flight down from Detroit with the rest of the organised crime team. They were descending, the FBI in all their forces. The tactical team had been sitting in wait for days. The plan was crafted to every last detail. Intelligence was gathered very carefully, with confirmation that Snoke was indeed, hiding in plain sight as Ashton Kenyon in the middle of St Louis.

Four tactical teams, one at each warehouse, and one at Snoke’s residence. Rey insisted she be on the team at Snoke’s house, and Solo had given her no resistance. Solo had kicked the door in, a move that Rey wasn’t sure was necessary, but appreciated watching him do all the same. Snoke had been standing in his living room, surrounded by First Order members clearly in the middle of planning their next move. Weapons were drawn, but the tactical team was too quick. Still, the gunfire rained. Ben had thrown himself on in front of Rey and pinned her to the wall as it began. His wide frame shielding her.Tactical called it when it was over and he stepped away from her like she had burned him. Someone from tactical was reading Snoke his rights, on his knees with his hands cuffed behind his back. She leant down, her hands on her knees as she stood inches from his face, recognition mixed with fury -

“I thought I told you to _stay the fuck down_.” She said to him, a smirk lingering on her lips. He was snarling up at her, unintelligible and angry like a kicked cat, “Maybe you’ll listen this time.” He would be going to maximum security, life, no parole. Without Snoke, the Order crumbled. They had no core, no organisation. When the members had heard the perfectly crafted rumour that Snoke was selling them all out, the numbers came from the woodwork with evidence and testimonies against their supreme leader. The whole organisation was in ruins, ashes. The tactical teams had found hundreds of armed explosives at each of the warehouses, they had the city locked down within minutes, the bomb squad spending the next four hours dismantling them.

Back out on the street, she was leaning against the hood of one of the black SUV’s, her bulletproof vest still strapped tightly to her chest.

Ben appeared in front of her, “How do you feel?”

“Relieved to not be full of bullet holes. Cheers for that.”

“I know you didn’t need it-”

“No, I didn’t,” She reached beneath the collar of her shirt and hooked her thumb underneath the chain of the necklace, pulling it up and out so it sat over the top of her vest. She watched him as he eyed it, he froze, his jaw set, “I had this.”

He blinked, trying to act as though his reaction to the chain had never happened, “What’s th-”

“Don’t play dumb, Solo.” She dropped the necklace, “I know everything I need to know about you.”

“You do?” Ben said, tilting his head in the same way she had seen his mother do days earlier, “Ah, you do. I’m sorry. I know it’s - it puts you in a difficult position. I’m not expecting you to say anything. And believe me when I tell you it won’t impact your job in any way, I swear, that’s why I-”

“What are you talking about?”

“The necklace.”

“So am I.”

“But - wait, but - I’m confused, what do you think it meant?”

“You think I’m a liability to the team, that I need to be kept safe because I can’t do it myself.”

“That’s - that’s not… that’s not what I meant by leaving that for you,” he was frowning now, “Rey, why do you think I left the fugitive taskforce?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know honestly, on the plane after Hux… I didn’t really get it.”

Ben let out a laugh, it was small and timid compared to his usual self, “I’ll say.” She was looking up at him expectantly, waiting for the clarification, and he sighed as though he might regret what he was about to say, “I have feelings for you. Big ones. Big, complicated ones. I couldn’t be on the team and watch you get hurt. So I left that for you while you were out on medical leave - left it on your desk like a coward. It - it made me feel better, because - look I don’t necessarily believe in it, but it’s kept me safe.”

He misunderstood the look Rey was giving him for contempt instead of awe. That much was obvious, “Like I said, it won’t affect you, I promise. It’s my issue. I’ve already told Holdo as much.”

She was about to speak, when the Homeland unit chief called him over.

“I have to go, I hope you don’t hate me too much.” And then he was gone.

They had caught Snoke. They had brought down the First Order. Ben Solo had feelings for her. And she was sitting alone on the bonnet of an FBI SUV, the red and blue lights from the surrounding vehicles starting to give her a migraine - at least, she assumed it was the lights.

* * * * *

The debrief at the local PD was quick. She had left the interrogation of everyone arrested to Storm and Lintra - a team she never wanted to be on the receiving end of. She had asked Dameron if she could go back to the hotel. She was aching all over, her heart sitting in her gut. She was confused, and off-kilter, and Poe could see it in her eyes. So she told him everything that had happened, and they filled in her report, before he sent her off. The Homeland unit was nowhere to be seen, so she couldn’t even ask Ben about what he had said outside Snoke’s apartment. One of the deputies dropped her off at the hotel, and she went to the front desk, showed them her badge and asked for a room number that most certainly wasn’t hers. They gave it to her, because that was the kind of freedom an FBI badge bought you. She thought about going to her room to change only once she had knocked on his door - still wearing his windbreaker, the sleeves pushed up her forearms. He answered the door, taken aback by her very existence by the looks of it.

Ben was in a pair of sweatpants and a white t-shirt that was too tight for anyones own good. His hair was still wet from a shower, and wordlessly he opened the door for her.

“Rey-“

“No, you've spoken enough.” She said, holding out her hand to stop him, “You spoke enough and I didn’t get to say a god damn word. You dropped all of that on me, and then left. _You_. _Suck_.”

“I know.” He said, his tone self-demonising. 

She groaned, “No, not because you have feelings for me. Not because of that.”

Ben sat down on the edge of the bed, watching her pace back and forth, the sleeves of the windbreaker sliding down her arms and swallowing her hands.

“Then why do I suck?” He seemed to be slightly amused by her choice of words.

“Because,” she said, swallowing hard as she tried to decipher the feelings rumbling in her chest, “Because you left the team and you didn’t tell me why.”

“I did tell you why.”

“No, no you didn’t. Not exactly.”

“It’s not my fault you’re obtuse. I thought I was perfectly clear.”

“ _Obtuse_?” She rounded on him, “I’m obtuse? You embarrass me in front of Holdo, then put me on the case, then you leave the team, leave _me_ , don’t talk to me, leave me _your_ necklace, then try and keep me off of the case, _again,_ then you help me, then - finally, you tell me you have feelings for me?” She was pacing again. Unable to still herself.

“I’ll admit, I’m not the best at this.”

“I’m not _obtuse_. You’re _confusing_.”

“I’m trying not to be.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Nothing. I don’t want anything from you.”

“No, not that. Not the answer you’ve been telling yourself and anyone who calls you out on it. I want the real answer. What do you want from me? To _fuck_ me? To _date_ me? To _marry_ me? What, what is it?”

“All of it.”

She stopped pacing again. Dead in her tracks.

“What?” Her voice was so quiet she barely heard it herself.

“I want all of it,” Ben said, defeated. He was laying his cards on the table, like he knew that after this they couldn’t go back, he wouldn’t be able to face her, but she had asked him a question and he was determined to answer it, “I want you. I want to fall asleep next to you, I want you to be the first thing I see in the morning, I want to hear about the highs and lows, I want to hold you through them. You. That’s my answer.”

The tension between them was so thick, Rey was certain it would suffocate her. Or maybe that was the way he was looking at her, the eyes that never end bore right into her own and she shrunk under his gaze. He was serious. He wasn’t messing with her. Ben Solo wanted her.

She moved towards him, and he flinched as though he was waiting for her to punch him. She didn’t. She reached her hand out and touched it to the gravely skin of his face, his stubble tickling her palm. He leant into it, his eyes closing, and her thumb ran over his cheekbone. She lowered herself down, placing one knee on the bed beside his hips, loading her weight until the other knee was on the other side of his hips. She lowered her weight into his lap, and his hands came to her waist. His eyes were open now, searching hers for an answer, for something.

Rey chewed the inside of her cheek, the intensity of his gaze building with every second of silence.

“Then,” Rey whispered, running a hand through his thick hair, “have me.”

“ _What_?”

“Have me. Make me yours.”

His hand splayed across her back, and she felt her heart leap into her throat, suddenly unable to breathe. His fingers spread from one side of her waist to the other, and he was looking at her like she was the sun and he had been inside for all his life. His eyes flicked between hers, and her mouth, in rapid succession. So she did it for him, leaning closer until her mouth found his, gentle then frantic as she melted against him, her willpower all but gone. One of his hands reached up, yanking the hair tie from her bun and losing his hand into her hair. Their kiss depended as he laid back, lowering them onto the bed, her hands coming over his shoulders to the mattress behind his head, holding herself up as they kissed, his hands running the length of her spine, working on their own orders. Her tongue found his, and Ben’s hips moved up into her, a groan coming from the back of his throat and a whimper from her own. She wanted him. She wanted Ben Solo, now more than ever. She wanted his clothes off of him and on the floor, or out the fucking window, she didn’t care where. One hand kept her propped up, the other worked on his tie and shirt buttons, tugging desperately until his hand came to close around hers.

“St-Stop, Rey.” His voice cracked as he spoke, like it was the hardest thing he would ever do.

She was off of him faster than it started, her cheeks burning with embarrassment, pulling her hair back up into a bun, her back turned to him, “Right.” She said, her walls back up.

“Rey, no,” he said, behind her before she could make it to the door, his hand on her waist, pulling her back to him, “It’s not what you’re thinking, we just have a flight in a few hours. This,” he said, leaning down to press his lips to the side of her neck, “isn’t something I want to rush. I’ve waited this long. I’d rather have you in my apartment, where I can make you dinner, flirt with you, make you mine on every surface of the place.”

Butterflies. She had genuine fucking butterflies at his touch. Rey couldn’t remember the last time she had felt like this. His fingertips on her waist, the gentle way he pressed himself against her back, the depth of his voice. She realised that she had in fact, never felt like this.

“Deal.” She whispered, reminding herself to wear something nicer than his windbreaker.

Ben's hand raised to the chain around her neck, kissing just behind her ear as he whispered, "Mine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okaAY so now it's a multi-chapter and there will in fact be smut - sit tight


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